Conor Oberst
As long as I can buy records and books and maybe some clothes, I'm pretty stoked. I don't need a yacht or anything.Collection: Book
I do think that music has a special ability to get behind enemy lines and win hearts and minds.Collection: Heart
I definitely think religion is responsible for a lot of the evils of the world. I mean that's not really in debate. But at the same time, I think whatever gets you through the day, whatever helps you make sense of life I'm not gonna begrudge my grandmother with her rosary beads. It works for them. And at the end of the day, I don't claim to know the answer to anything.Collection: Mean
In a coma, you don't dream, you just hope that someone sits with you.Collection: Dream
I don't hold anything against Barack Obama. I just think the system is so corrupt, it doesn't matter how well-intentioned someone is, as I believe he was and is. At the end of the day, I think it just comes down to money. This is all about class warfare. All of our political problems.Collection: Believe
If I could act like This was my real life, And not some cage where I've been placed, Well then, I could tell you The truth like I used to And not be afraid of sounding fake.Collection: Real
When people have real faith in something, it's fascinating to me. And the fact that so many people, in surveys, so many people say they do. It kind of blows my mind.Collection: Real
The idea of forever is kind of ridiculous, which is unfortunate because its kind of a nice thing to say, you know. I think it softens the blow of mortality and having to say goodbye to everything you know and everyone you love and all that kind of thing.Collection: Goodbye
Everything that happens is supposed to be And it's all pre-determined, can't change your destiny Guess I'll just keep moving, someday maybe I'll get to where I'm goingCollection: Moving
Some days I feel like I'm an atheist. Most days, I feel like an agnostic. On a very rare day, I feel like I'm a believer in something.Collection: Atheist
I understand why people get desensitized and roll their eyes when they hear a protest song, or even a politician making some flowery speech. It doesn't really change anything.Collection: Song
It's always the negative things that seep through into your consciousness. Most of the positive things just roll off real fast. I just try not to pay attention to it, because I've never read anything about my band that's accurate.Collection: Real
The Bible's blind, the Torah's deaf, the Qur'an is mute; if you burned them all together you'd get close to the truth.Collection: Together
I need some meaning I can memorize. The kind I have always seems to slip my mind.Collection: Mind
I like science fiction. Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick and Vonnegut, and I really like Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale. And you know, so much of science fiction has to do with predicting what’s to come, so I think that’s really interesting.Collection: Thinking
If you love something, give it away...Collection: Giving
It's not a movie, no private screening This method acting, well, I call that livingCollection: Acting
My dad, who plays guitar and piano and was in cover bands, along with my older brother, Matt, taught me guitar and stuff. I started writing acoustic songs and playing by myself in 7th grade.Collection: Song
There's nothing that the road cannot healCollection: Heal
You mean nothing to no one but that's nobody's fault...Collection: Mean
My head's a carousel of pictures and The spinning never stops.Collection: Spinning
The world's become a little too mean.Collection: Mean
For a song I was bought Now I lie when I talk With a careful eye on the cue card. Onto a stage I was pushed, With my sorrow well rehearsed. So give me all your pity and your money, now (all of it).Collection: Song
So I wait for the day when I'll hear the key as it turns in the lock And the guard will say to me, "Oh my patient prisoner you waited for this day and finally, you are free! You are free! You are free!Collection: Keys
One by one I drowned all the people I’d been.Collection: People
Well morning came, and it dressed the sky in a lovely yellow gown. Shopping malls are opening in that narrow hallway of downtown, filled with people who are shopping for their lovers and their friends, singing "I won't ever be lonely againCollection: Lonely
And I sing and sing of awful things The pleasure that my sadness brings.Collection: Sadness
Love's an excuse to get hurt and to hurt. Do you like to hurt? I do, I do then hurt me.Collection: Hurt
I drug your ghost across the country, and we plotted out my death. Every city and memory we whispered "Here is where you rest." Well I was determined in Chicago but I dug my teeth into my knees And I settled for a telephone, sang into your machine: "You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.Collection: Country
And me I'm in the bathroom crying out my eyelids because it's hard to be a man when you're scared, just like a little kid.Collection: Kids
And the sad act like lepers They stick to the shadows They long to ring bells of warning To tell of their coming So that the pure can shut their doors.Collection: Doors
For a sunrise or a sunset, you're manic or you're depressed. Will you ever feel ok?Collection: Sunset
And in the morning when the sun rise. Look in the water, see the blue sky. As if heaven has been laid there at our feet.Collection: Morning
I’m always fascinated when people really fervently believe, because I have such a hard time believing anything. When people have real faith in something, it’s fascinating to me. And the fact that so many people, in surveys, so many people say they do. It kind of blows my mind.Collection: Real
Every time I finish a song... most of the time it's in my own head, like this sounds too much like a Townes Van Zandt song, or whoever. I realize there are so many melodies and chord progressions in pop and rock music that are so similar that you can kind of trace it back to other things. Most of the time it's just in your head.Collection: Song
Cause I swear that I'm dying, slowly but its happening.Collection: Death
I've thought about the idea of, 'Can happiness and creativity co-exist?' So much of what I've done, I think, has been based on being dissatisfied or incomplete or lonely. The answer is, 'There isn't an answer, necessarily.Collection: Lonely
It's in vogue to have a cause and give money in charity. But to actually speak up and say something like, I'm pissed about this" - that doesn't seem to be very popular unless you're writing a blog or tweeting.Collection: Writing
Maybe there's a different story when it comes to hip-hop or different genres, but as far as rock music goes, I think there is a sort of fear of saying things people might be apt to criticize. Our band is the opposite of that.Collection: Thinking
We, the Desaparecidos, are perfectly prepared for people to hate what we're saying or not like what we're saying.Collection: Hate
Desaparecidos try to be the opposite of apathetic. There are so many young people in America that are apathetic.Collection: America
I liked the idea of having a record that's reggae-influenced but not musically, just lyrically. I think there's so much about Rasta culture that's interesting. Just the idea of preaching one-ness, that we're all in this together. Which I suppose is at the root of most any religion. You're gonna find it, if taken in the right context.Collection: Taken
I'm ripe for the picking for the Scientologists - one of those creeps. Someone's got to find me. Some little weird cult can just pluck me up, because I'm ripe for the picking.Collection: Littles
I love story songs. It's just, for me, they're harder to write, and sometimes they sound too intended or something.Collection: Song
I think that obviously the quest for purpose, or meaning, or understanding to existence is something that I always think about, always deal with. I guess everybody does - that existential crisis of human condition. It's nothing new. But I'd love to come across something that really made me believe in something.Collection: Believe
Each Desaparecidos's song has a seed that it came from. We're trying to take that and broaden it out and make it resonate with people.Collection: Song
Since the songs were written over a five-year period, I think these are little snapshots. Some people call it political or topical, but I think each song is self-contained. I think it fits together as a picture of the last half-decade of time.Collection: Song
Much of appreciating art or music is really the interpretation of the listener. To a certain extent it's projection - it's what people need or lack in themselves that they then put upon these people that they admire.Collection: Art
My feeling is that I think writers in general tend to be self-conscious and it takes a bit of a leap of faith or just not giving a sh-t to write something you know people are going to criticize.Collection: Writing